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The 27th day of the 6th month of Tenshō 10 (July 16, 1582)
Kiyosu Castle, Owari Province (present-day Kiyosu, Aichi Prefecture)
Forces
The faction backing Sanbōshi, led by Hashiba Hideyoshi
The faction backing Oda Nobutaka, led by Shibata Katsuie
About 12 min read
On the 2nd day of the 6th month of Tenshō 10 (June 21, 1582), Oda Nobunaga, staying at Honnō-ji temple in Kyoto, was attacked by his retainer Akechi Mitsuhide in an act of betrayal and took his own life. On the same day, Nobunaga's eldest son and heir as head of the Oda clan, Oda Nobutada, was surrounded by Akechi's forces at the Nijō New Palace in Kyoto and likewise committed suicide. With both Nobunaga and Nobutada lost at once, the Oda clan faced the urgent task of determining its successor and the disposition of its territories.
Mitsuhide himself was defeated and killed by Hashiba Hideyoshi at the Battle of Yamazaki on the 13th of the same month, and Hideyoshi's political standing within the Oda camp rose sharply as a result. Amid this situation, a council of senior retainers was convened at Kiyosu Castle in Owari Province to decide the clan's future.
The conference was held on the 27th day of the 6th month of Tenshō 10 (July 16, 1582) at Kiyosu Castle in Owari. Four senior Oda retainers attended directly: Shibata Katsuie, Niwa Nagahide, Hashiba Hideyoshi, and Ikeda Tsuneoki. Another senior retainer, Takigawa Kazumasu, had been defeated by the Later Hōjō at the Battle of Kanagawa in the Kantō region and had not yet returned to the Kinai, and so was unable to take part. Nobunaga's sons Oda Nobukatsu and Oda Nobutaka, along with the allied lord Tokugawa Ieyasu, are said to have exchanged written pledges entrusting the decision to the four senior retainers.
The central issue at the conference was who would succeed Nobunaga. According to the traditional account, Nobunaga's second son Oda Nobukatsu and third son Oda Nobutaka each asserted a claim to headship, with Shibata Katsuie backing Nobutaka. Hashiba Hideyoshi, however, supported neither Nobukatsu nor Nobutaka, and instead argued for installing Sanbōshi (later Oda Hidenobu), the infant son of the late Oda Nobutada who was then only three years old, as heir. With his political weight bolstered by his victory over Akechi Mitsuhide at Yamazaki, Hideyoshi's argument prevailed over Katsuie's objections, and Sanbōshi's succession was decided. More recent scholarship has suggested that Sanbōshi's succession may already have been a foregone conclusion, and that the real point of contention at the conference was instead who would serve as regent until Sanbōshi came of age. Whichever account is correct, the outcome was that Sanbōshi succeeded to headship of the clan, with Nobukatsu and Nobutaka serving as his guardians, Hori Hidemasa as his tutor, and the four senior retainers acting in support.
Alongside the succession decision, the conference also settled the redistribution of Oda territories. Nobukatsu inherited Owari Province and Nobutaka inherited Mino Province, while Hashiba Hidekatsu — Nobunaga's fourth son, adopted by Hideyoshi — received Tanba Province. Shibata Katsuie was confirmed in his home territory of Echizen and additionally received Hideyoshi's former holding of Nagahama Castle along with three districts of northern Ōmi worth 120,000 koku. Niwa Nagahide, confirmed in his home territory of Wakasa, was granted two additional districts in Ōmi, and Ikeda Tsuneoki received three additional districts in Settsu. Sanbōshi himself was assigned Sakata District in Ōmi and Azuchi Castle. Hideyoshi, in addition to his existing holdings of Harima and Tajima, received Kawachi and Yamashiro, giving him a domain of roughly 280,000 koku that now exceeded Katsuie's own. The allied lord Tokugawa Ieyasu, meanwhile, used the occasion to advance into the former territories of the Takeda clan (the Tenshō Jingo War), a move the Kiyosu decisions effectively ratified.
In the wake of the Kiyosu Conference, Hashiba Hideyoshi established a position within the Oda clan that surpassed Shibata Katsuie's both in political influence and in the size of his actual territory. Although Katsuie appeared, on the surface, to have preserved his standing as senior-most retainer, real initiative within the clan had shifted decisively toward Hideyoshi. In the aftermath of the conference, the rivalry between Hideyoshi and Katsuie steadily sharpened. Citing suspected treachery on the part of Nobutaka and Katsuie, Hideyoshi overturned the Kiyosu decisions and moved to install Oda Nobukatsu as head of the clan instead. The rift between the two men became irreparable, and in Tenshō 11 (1583) their forces clashed in Ōmi Province at the Battle of Shizugatake. Hideyoshi's victory there destroyed Katsuie and left Hideyoshi in full command of Oda authority, setting him on the path that would culminate in the establishment of the Toyotomi regime.
Sanbōshi, installed as heir to the Oda clan at the Kiyosu Conference, grew up to take the name Oda Hidenobu. At the time of the Battle of Sekigahara in Keichō 5 (1600), Hidenobu was invited by Ishida Mitsunari to join the Western Army in exchange for the grant of Mino and Owari provinces; although he had originally intended to side with the Eastern Army, delays in mustering his troops led him to join the Western side instead. On the 22nd day of the 8th month of that year, Hidenobu led a force of 6,530 horsemen against the Eastern Army at Yoneno but was defeated by the forces of Ikeda Terumasa and Fukushima Masanori, after which he withdrew to his stronghold at Gifu Castle. Following a day-long siege on the 23rd of the 8th month, Hidenobu surrendered and opened the castle at Terumasa's urging.
After his surrender, Hidenobu shaved his head and took Buddhist vows at Jōsen-bō in Kaminokano, Mino. His domain of 130,000 koku was confiscated, and he was ordered into exile at Mount Kōya. However, owing to the lingering resentment over his grandfather Nobunaga's earlier attack on Mount Kōya, he was initially denied entry, and his disposition remained unsettled until the 28th day of the 10th month. On the 8th day of the 5th month of Keichō 10 (1605), Hidenobu came down from Mount Kōya to live at its foot, and on the 27th of that month he died at Mukaizoe at the age of twenty-six. His death brought an end to the main line of the Danjō-no-jō house, the direct lineage of Oda Nobunaga.
The Kiyosu Conference stands in Japanese history both as a compromise among senior retainers filling the political vacuum left by Nobunaga's death, and, in its consequences, as a decisive step on Hideyoshi's road to national supremacy. Sanbōshi himself, though formally recognized as heir by the conference, never held real power amid the shifting political currents that followed, and ultimately lost both his status as a daimyō and his very lineage in the wake of Sekigahara. The Kiyosu Conference thus formally settled the question of Oda "succession" even as it symbolized how real power had already passed decisively into the hands of the senior retainers.